WHY MANGOES ARE LOSING THEIR SWEET SPOT

Frozen in time, India's ancient mango cultivars are battling abuse and neglect, on and off the farm

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Bathua, a village in Bihar's Samastipur district, is named after an age-old local mango variety. The hamlet is an oasis of calm with 700 acres of sprawling orchards, home to century-old trees and memories of a time when being an orchard owner was a measure of one's economic and social status.

But the Bathua mango is on the brink of extinction, and the pride of being an orchard owner is fading away, replaced by a sense of loss and foreboding.

Orchard owner Pramod Sharma, 54, who now runs a petty construction business, speaks of the mango like a lost childhood friend. Nowadays, he laments, most owners sell their orchards before the onset of flowering. In these parts, mango trees flower in January and the harvest begins in June, before the arrival of the monsoon rains.

This year, Sharma pre-sold the harvest of his 100-tree orchard for a pittance: ₹61,000. That translates to a farm gate price of less than 10 for the prized Malda variety, just about what a farmer growing potatoes or tomato hopes to make. It was Sharma's best bet. Pre-selling the harvest to a thekedar or contractor freed him from spending on nutrients and pesticides, and the risk of a crop loss or price crash in future.

But there's a cost. Contractors often apply growth regulators such as paclobutrazol, PBZ in short, to induce flowering.

Most mango varieties fruit well one year and produce little or nothing the next.

Contractors apply PBZ, often many times more than the recommended dose, to restrict vegetative growth and force reproductive growth or flowering intensity.

Farmers say this goes against nature, and liken it to forcing a woman to bear children without allowing her the ninemonth gestation period.

Contractors also overuse pesticides, including those not recommended for use in fruit trees (such as chlorpyrifos), and apply fertilizers (again, not recommended), including urea, to drive yields.